Good people aren’t wealthy.
Let me make this clear here. It’s actually impossible to hoard millions in personal fortune and also live an ethical life.
Some people are taking this as a personal attack against their families, who make something in the six figure range. This post is not about you. In full scale, families like that are not what I’d consider to be “wealthy”.
I’m talking about the multi-millionaire/billionaire CEOs, politicians, and media moguls. This isn’t about your uncle who’s a surgeon and saves people’s lives. Please don’t misinterpret that. They’re not nearly on the same scale of “wealthy”.
But if your uncle is the head of a multinational corporation that utilizes cheap overseas labour and exploits third world countries, fuck that guy actually.
There are a small handful of people, fewer than 10, who own as much wealth as half the world’s human population of over 7 billion.
With no exaggeration, these few people could give away almost all of their money, sell off almost everything else and give that away, and instantly double the quality of living of over 3.5 billion people, AND still be more wealthy than any of those 3.5 billion people, AND still be more wealthy than almost anyone else on Earth, AND still have all of the intangible wealth, social connections, and reputation that would allow them to quickly, if not instantly, acquire any amount of money they could ever need. If they didn’t feel like giving it away, they could still hire half the people on Earth to work full time to do whatever job they had in mind, profit off their labor, and still pay a better wage than they’re making now, which would make them more likely to live longer and want to maintain a better lifestyle, and thus buy more things, enriching the wealthy even more.
Wealthy people are so wealthy, they literally hold the fate of anyone and everyone else in their hands, but are too self-centered or unconcerned with the reality of ordinary people to actually put the power of that wealth to good use.
